Germantown Newspapers
The Germantown Chronicle • The Northwest Independent
6661 Germantown Ave • Philadelphia, PA 19119 • 215-438-4000 • germantownnewspapers.com
The only paper in Germantown, Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill delivered door-to-door to over 36,500 households.
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March 28 Independent.pdf March 28 Chronicle.pdf
May 15
Philadelphia & PA Regional Candidates Night
This is a great opportunity for you to come out and talk with Philadelphia residents about important issues concerning our region, as well as, answer questions from the audience. This is a chance for voters to learn more about you, and a chance for you to express why you are running for office.
This forum will be held as follows:
DATE: Wednesday,
May 15, 2013
TIME: 5 p.m.
PLACE:
Joseph E. Coleman NW Regional Library
68 W. Chelten Avenue
(at Greene Street)
Philadelphia, PA 19144
Please RSVP your interest to participate in this forum by contacting Rev. Chester H. Williams - CBNC President & Founder, before Friday, May 3, 2013. You may email him at jesus4620032004@yahoo.com or call him at (215) 849-8021.
This forum is sponsored by the following Northwest Philadelphia Community Groups:
Chew & Belfield Neighbors Club, Inc. (CBNC), Awbury Neighbors Association & Awbury Arboretum
Telephone: (215) 849-8021
Email: jesus4620032004 @yahoo.com
chewandbelfield.webs.com
The CBNC is a 501(c)(3) and Registered Community Organization (RCO) Group
Chew and Belfield Neighbors Club, Inc. 501(c )(3).
The Day the Music Died
I could think of no better phrase to describe the events of September 11, 2001 than borrowing the line from the 1970’s song reflecting on a 1950’s event. It has been said that during the tumultuous late 1960’s America lost its innocence. On September 11, 2001, America lost its independence. It lost not only the independence and personal freedoms so wisely set forth by our forefathers, but also lost the independence we enjoyed from the constricted and supervised lifestyles of those living in virtually all other countries.
A Different War in Women
by Victoria A. Brownworth
The phrase "war on women" is used frequently by Progressives to describe restrictions on contraception and access to abortion promoted by Conservatives. Yet there is another war on women going on in this country that gets far less attention than reproductive rights. That war on women should be headline news on both sides of the political aisle, but remains largely ignored.
On May 6 three young women who had been missing for a decade in Cleveland were found. The women–14, 16 and 20 when they were abducted–had been held prisoner by three brothers in their 50s in a quiet, mostly Latino neighborhood not unlike East Mt. Airy. One of the three women had been forced to have a child with one of her captors.
Creating Community by the Barrel
by Linda Slodki
What happens when artists bring children, adults, and elders together to create painted rain barrels? They build community. They make waves for water conservation through their paintings and luscious images. They raise awareness of water as a natural resource.
City Government: Mismanaging the Madness
April 25: Philadelphia moves into free fall even faster as the days go by and Mayor Michael Nutter is the face of failure. We have reported on his defiant and arrogant approach to governance before, but the pace accelerates with each passing day. Reminiscent of one-party power mongers of the past, Nutter takes a Huey Long approach as the “kingfish” who disregards all manner of propriety, personal and fiscal responsibility to the people, underscored regularly with a “my way or the highway” pattern. But he is losing ground even among the true believers as the train wreck on the horizon is becoming a clearer and clearer picture even to the most calloused observer.
Fattah Chief of Staff and Germantown Newspapers
2014 Election Gets an Early Start
April 25: Congressman Chaka Fattah rarely takes any criticism seriously and his office never even bothers to respond to comments of politicians or journalists as he considers himself invincible and electable into eternity. Designated as the “safest seat in the U.S. Congress”, the Pennsylvania 2nd Congressional District seat that encompasses half of Philadelphia and parts of adjacent Montgomery County must be seen in a new light as Fattah’s Chief of Staff sends written barbs to the Independently registered challenger in the last election who garnered a full 1.4% of the vote, and who publishes this Northwest Philadelphia newspaper. I mentioned Congressman Fattah in a recent editorial critiquing how public money is used in this city.
Calling Foul on Foster’s Editorial
Editor:
As an active Northwest neighbor, former journalist and recently retired press secretary for Congressman Fattah, I'm writing to call foul on the Mr. Foster's last editorial. His swipes at the work of some of our neighborhood organizations, an academic institution, and some elected officials are without fact or merit.
Gosnell Case Raises Questions
by Victoria A. Brownworth
April 25: The trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell began March 18. It took a few weeks of increasingly gruesome testimony for anti-choice activists to notice. Once they did, they asserted that no one had been reporting on the case of the illegal abortion provider in University City who was initially charged with the murders of a Bhutanese refugee and mother of four, Karnmayar Mongar, 41 and seven babies born alive during botched abortion procedures.
Election of New Members of the Germantown Special Services District Board of Directors
by Pamela Bracey
April 25: On Wednesday, April 17, a meeting was held at State Representative Stephen Kinsey's (201st Legislative District) office to elect new members of the GSSD Board of Directors. There were approximately twenty persons present with representatives from the Commerce Department, Councilwoman Cindy Bass' office, State Representative Rosita C. Youngblood's office, business and property owners from the GSSD area and interested community persons. State Law and the By-Laws require this election.
Your Children Belong to the State
MSNBC Anchor Dreams of Huxley Prophecy
I could not believe what I was watching on a YouTube film of an MSNBC intermission public service announcement of the type they have been promoting lately. Unabashedly self-confident and in her usual authoritarian and condescending tone, daytime anchor Melissa Harris-Perry told the audience that they must get over their “private notion of children and that your kid is yours”. Expanding on the subject she relates that we must adapt to the “very collective notion” that the children belong to the community and are “our children” and do not belong to parents of the families. “They will be raised by the society.”
Stunned, I flashbacked to a day in the summer of 1963 when I was stationed with a Marine Detachment at the Naval Air Station in Millington Tennessee, just outside of Memphis. One of the men in the unit threw me a paperback and told me: “read this, it is science fiction, but it is an amazing story.” It was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, written in 1931 forecasting how universal socialism would render the human experience by 2540. Interviewed in 1958 relative to his forecasts from the 30’s, Huxley observed that we were moving in that direction much faster than he anticipated. According to Ms. Harris-Perry, we are very close, if we can all just get our minds right. She was clearly convinced that there was no need for debate on this subject of children - - just compliance.
The Woman Who Saved Britain
In a country that routinely sees a self-important citizenry bite the hands that feed them, Margaret Thatcher was a defiantly strong woman among the weakened men of the late 20th Century.
Beginning with the political dumping of Winston Churchill after guiding a nearly failed country through World War II, institutional socialism and political ineptness had all but eradicated the place on the world stage for what was once the reigning British Empire.
Margaret Thatcher Revisited
by Victoria A. Brownworth
When former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died April 8, I had to stop and take a breath. A page had turned in world history.
I spent a lot of time in London during the last years of Thatcher’s tenure, reporting on various issues. It was a period of upheaval and protest, yet despite that, Thatcher was elected three times, serving as Prime Minister from 1979 through 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and to date, the only woman ever elected prime minister in the U.K.
All Reporters Matter – Even at Fox
by Victoria A. Brownworth
Jana Winter may be going to jail. Most progressives like myself aren’t usually paying attention to what happens over at FOX news, but this week I was.
Winter will be in court on April 17 for a special hearing. Winter, a FOX news investigative reporter who covered the Aurora, Colorado trial of accused mass murderer James Holmes, first broke the story that Holmes had given his psychiatrist a notebook prior to the shooting rampage in a movie theater that killed 12 and injured 70 others, some of whom are permanently disabled from their injuries.
Adding Insult to Outrage
March 28, 2013: I had the genuine misfortune to attend the scheduled meeting of the state controlled PICA Board last week in order to better understand how that oversight entity reviewed city budget operations, as it is required to do under the Laws of the Commonwealth.
Created in 1991 as the city was facing municipal collapse and borrowed money from the state to meet basic obligations, it is staffed by five individuals appointed by the Governor and Republican and Democrat senators and representatives.
Poverty Profiteering
It has been just about 15 years now since I first started sending my comments to the Northwest Philadelphia newspapers taking on the political establishment and its cozy dealings with developers, rampant sidestepping of City Codes, the flagrant misuse of non-profits and public money in the hundreds of millions and how it began as far back as 1968 but really escalated in our community and Philadelphia in general by the late 1970s.
City Reaction to Scofflaw
L & I takes prompt action, sends document
Sanitation goes to denial, despite photo
March 28, 2013: The front page story in our last issue was one regarding a major scofflaw development project at 33 Carpenter Lane in West Mt. Airy. The entire process was done outside of the law and photographic evidence time dated showed City of Philadelphia Sanitation trucks removing the demolition debris in three special runs done to the location as evidenced by eye witnesses.
Post Your Comments and Updates There. Check for Events and Happenings, too.
Please Buy Our Plants Again (because)
Hansberry Garden & Nature Center will host a native plant sale on May 11th at the corner of Hansberry and Wayne from 9 am to 4 pm. As we consider what to do with our yards, flower baskets and vegetable gardens this year the question of native species versus exotic may come up. So what is so important about native plants?
I’ve got a garden in front of my row house on Pulaski Avenue. I use almost exclusively native perennials on my 18’x18’ patch of earth because I don’t have to mow it. I don’t have to fertilize it. “Weeding” in my garden is usually done with a beer in my hand, not a weed-killer. Now that my garden is established, I don’t have to water it except in the dog days of July and August between storms. I usually do that with a beer in my hand, too.
Whether or not you want native plants to be your new excuse to drink, they do play a critical role in keeping our ecosystem and even our agricultural systems up and running. It’s sometimes heartbreaking to consider the extent to which we’ve converted the fertile river banks of the Delaware and the Schuylkill into our teaming city. Consider the wildlife that must have lived here among the Lenape tribes: puma, elk, forest bison (extinct), wolves, to name just a few. Our city, like so many others, has effectively capped some of the most precious terrain on the continent like a land-fill. Regardless of Philadelphia’s current land cover, we’re still at the confluence of those major rivers, still at the bio-diverse boundary between mountains and coastal shores, still a source of food and nutrients to insects, birds, and other wildlife who are just passing through. In a modern world constantly on the brink of change, native plants remain. A flora encompassed tradition that provides balance to our local neighborhoods and remains as a vital fuel supply link to the larger world. Your native plants will help bolster insects that pollinate our crops, which will fuel birds, which will then migrate to wild areas or farmlands, which will then fuel everyone from house cats to bobcats and more. Most non-native plants can’t serve as nearly so valuable an energy source.
So, why plant with native plants? Because you’ll save money (Hansberry’s prices are lowest for blocks around), you’ll save time on mowing (we’ll help you chose the right perennials for your sunny or shady space), you’ll like the way they look (aquilegia is more romantic than rose and will also inspire you to design space ships in your free time), you’ll save water, and you’ll contribute to a world that’s way more important than the internet in a way that really matters to us and other species.
We hope to see you at the corner of Hansberry and Wayne on Saturday, May 12th. Its amazing to be a part of a this Germantown neighborhood that banned together ten years ago to raise a blighted corner to an award winning garden. Cash or credit card accepted. We also have organic herbs, veggies and flowers for Mom. Proceeds will help us continue to grow food for local pantries and keep us eating locally.
Chris Mendel
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6661 Germantown Avenue
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Free Legal Advice on June 19
The Philadelphia Bar Association will offer free legal advice to residents of Philadelphia and the surrounding counties on June 19, between 5 and 8 p.m. Members of the public can access the service by calling the Association’s LegalLine P.M. hotline at (215) 238-6333.
Area residents seeking confidential legal advice will be able to speak for free with a volunteer attorney from the Philadelphia Bar Association. Attorneys are available to offer information about any aspect of the law including family law, landlord-tenant, workers’ compensation and employment law, among other topics.
LegalLine P.M. is a public service sponsored by the Young Lawyers Division of the Philadelphia Bar Association. LegalLine P.M. is offered on the third Wednesday of every month from 5 to 8 p.m. LRIS is available Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., by calling (215) 238-6333.
William Campbell Passes
Mr. William Eugene Campbell, Jr., affectionately known as “Bill,” was born to the late Mr. William E. Campbell Sr. and the late Mrs. Mae Campbell of Philadelphia, PA on August 31, 1928. Bill was the oldest of four (4) children: Lois Campbell Ruffin, Bernice Campbell Goldsmith and Eddie Campbell (Deceased), all born and raised in Philadelphia, PA.
Bill departed this life on April 29, 2013, at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. Preceding Bill in death was his eldest son, Gaylord Eric Campbell, who passed this life on October 21, 2008. Bill re-committed his life to Jesus Christ prior to his death.
He is survived by three duaghters, Paula Moore, Patricia Moore and Linda Milton. Paula works in executive sales at Germantown Newspapers.
Services will be held Friday, May 10, at Miller Memorial Baptist Church, 1518 N. 22nd Street, Philadelphia. Viewing will be from 9 to 10 a.m. followed by a service at 10 a.m.
Interment will be private.
